RZ-DPSK is commonly used in long haul transmission. Typically, a transmitter for generating an RZ-DPSK signal consists of a phase shift keyed (PSK) modulation part and an RZ pulse carving part. In fact, all methods to date require at least two separate modulators in this way, one to phase modulate the signal and one to carve the RZ pulses. This is shown in FIG. 1.
In all methods, the source data must first be differentially encoded, prior to optical modulation. This is typically achieved using a high speed exclusive OR gate with the output tapped and fed back by a one bit delay to the input. This encoding is required because the receiver side demodulator relies on a one bit optical delay for phase comparisons.
To convert the differentially encoded electrical signal to a modulated optical signal, laser light is phase modulated using a phase modulator or a chirp free Mach Zehnder intensity modulator. The phase modulator approach obeys analogue behaviour with respect to the drive voltage. Hence, any discrepancy in the electrical signal passes on directly to the optical signal as fluctuations in the phase of the light. The Mach Zehnder approach removes these phase fluctuations by chirp free operation and relies on the fact that the light changes phase by 180° when driving through the minimum throughput bias point In this way, exact 180° phase encoding can be achieved at the expense of additional intensity modulation. The inherent intensity modulation is removed by gating with an RZ pulse carver stage to form RZ-DPSK signals.
Each optical bit is intensity modulated to produce a repetitive stream of RZ pulses. The RZ intensity modulation is usually provided by a sine wave driven Mach Zehnder modulator. A Mach Zehnder modulator can be driven in several ways, typically with either a full rate clock driver at the quadrature bias point to give 50% duty cycle pulses or with a half rate clock driver at the maxima or minima bias points to give 33% or 66% duty cycles respectively. FIG. 1 shows a standard 33% or 66% RZ-DPSK transmitter configuration in accordance with the prior art.
As mentioned above, in the systems of the prior art, phase and intensity fluctuations result from the driver output signal quality, and also the driver to modulator interface. Standard NRZ drivers can be particularly noisy due to inter symbol interference (ISI) generated from the broadband driver response.